BeagleBone Black: A 1-GHz computer for $45

This credit card-sized Linux computer was one of the coolest demos on the show floor at last week's DESIGN West.

One of the most interesting demos at last week's DESIGN West conference was BeagleBone Black, a ready-to-use 1-GHz computer that retails for a whopping $45.

BeagleBone Black was announced last week by BeagleBoard.org, a small group of engineers interested in creating powerful, open and embedded devices. The credit card sized computer runs on Linux and is designed to be an open hardware and software development platform that makes it quick and easy to build systems.

BeagleBone Black includes all the necessary components to connect a display, keyboard and network. It's based on production-ready hardware and software. All of the components—including TI’s 1-GHz Sitara AM335x processor—are commercially available right now.

Carlos Betancourt, a marketing engineer for TI's Sitara processors, described BeagleBone Black as "truly" open source. He noted that open source software is not always as open as it claims to be. "When it comes to hardware, open source means you can buy all these chips and use them for your own design," Betancourt said.

BeagleBone Black includes 2 GB of on-board storage to run pre-loaded Linux software. It also offers the Cloud9 integrated development environment to kickstart development and keep the microSD slot available for additional storage.

The BeagleBoard.org ecosystem includes free access to documentation, example code and mainline kernel support for other software distributions like Ubuntu, Android and Fedora. BeagleBone Black’s kernel and driver flexibility allows users to easily integrate new hardware and software, according to the organization.

In BeagleBoard.org community includes more than 30 plug-in boards—called “capes” by the community—that are compatible with BeagleBone Black, including those to integrate BeagleBone Black with 3-D printers, a DMX lighting controller, a Geiger counter, a telerobotic submarine and LCD touch screens. More are on the way.

Do you have a creative project idea that can help change the world? Make it a reality by ordering BeagleBone Black now. A list of distributors is available at www.beagleboard.org/black. Initial quantities are limited. BeagleBone Black is expected to ship in volume by the end of May.

@joshxdr,
killer app for this tiny PC is .... SMART BOMBs for jehads...
just imagine, one can equip a model airplane with this PC integrated with camera, GPS, and some explosives.
it can fly 20 miles to a certain target with GPS guidance then switch to camera guidance for
cm accuracy.
the whitehouse bombed news will become reality...
someone interested in develop the open source code for free?

The media capabilities are to allow introduction to basic desktops or for kiosk use. The real capabilites for this are for developing embedded processing in sensors. Perhaps a handheld IR camera for thermal measurement, image processing for intelligent occupancy detection or security. Production line process control using wireless sensors. A device like the Beagle Board lets you do you prototyping ate a price point that won't cause the CFO to cringe, but then let you custom design your platform later.

NTP server. It could be connected to 9, more or less, external stratum 2 or pool servers listed here http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Servers/WebHome and then serve quality time to a home or organization network, provided of course NTP is inlcuded the Linux distribution that comes with it. For more accurate time one could use a local GPS clock. Lots of people use the Rasberry Pi for this. See here http://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/Raspberry-Pi-NTP.html

What is the killer app for these tiny PCs? I can use an old laptop to stream media to my TV. A lot of the industrial applications I am familiar with are not so space constrained, so they don't need the miniaturization. Is there a big market for spider robots like in the video? Maybe low cost UAVs, or submerged applications (easier to seal a small volume)?

This is progress. I'm waiting for similar low-cost platform that can run something like a MythTV Frontend, including enough of a GPU to smoothly display HD content at least 1080p, 120Hz with motion interpolation.